Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Wed Apr 1st Todays News

On Bolt Report an ongoing policy is that any Islam post can only be on the pinned leader. Normal rules apply in that if it is merely foul and abusive it will be deleted. Otherwise comments are welcome. ===NSW conservatives have had a hard fought win to get legislation through regulating Kings Cross pubs and clubs. Libertarians said it was an over reach. ALP have vested interests in alcohol distribution. And so with strong media opposition suggesting the world would end, people would stop visiting Sydney, and they would take their fights to Melbourne, the legislation was passed. And the results are strong, with crime down across the board and police able to concentrate on other things. And the result was contained, not released before or during the recent election campaign. It is Mike Baird's birthday and April Fool's day. But it is the media that is playing us for mugs. Where are the balanced journalists suggesting the world would end, retracting their statements?Meanwhile, the electorates where Greens profited most from the environmental scares regarding Coal Seam Gas are not the electorates where any CSG fracking is planned. But the new members will be able to tell electorates, where CSG can be safely and responsibly mined, that it isn't for them.In 528, the first girl was made monarch in Chinese history. The next day she was deposed. In 1340, Niels Ebbesen entered the bedroom of Gerhard III of Holstein. Niels brought friends with him. He didn't like Gerhard. They cut off Gerhard's head and then beat a drum to let people know what they had done. They escaped across a bridge already weakened to be destroyed to prevent chase. Only one of the group of friends died in the escape. Denmark's interregnum was over. In 1826, the internal combustion engine was patented. In 1854, Charles Dickens serialised his novel Hard Times for a magazine. In 1867, Singapore became a British colony. In 1873, the worst maritime disaster of the nineteenth century had White Star's RMS Atlantic sink of Nova Scotia, killing 547. In 1891, the Wrigley Company was founded in Chicago, Illinois. In 1919, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in Weimar. In 1924, Adolf Hitler was sentenced for his Beer Hall Putsch. In 1933, Nazis organised a one day strike against Jewish companies. On the same day, Walter Hammond hit the then highest cricket score in Test Matches of 336 not out against New Zealand for England. In 1957, BBC did an April Fools hoax program of Spaghetti Trees being blighted. In 1970, President Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking act into law. In 1976, Apple was launched as a computer company. Also in 1976, British Astronomer Patrick Moore made the Jovian Pluto gravitational hoax. In 2004, Google released GMail.

2014

I have an interest in new technology but I despise the hucksterism of Anthropogenic Global Warming belief. Channel 10 on Monday had programmed in the afternoon an episode on new technology in fuels of the future. I was curious. I saw the beginning, which was about, rampant global warming meaning people aren't evolving fast enough to survive, before I turned off feeling ripped off again. Their religion with little basis in reality spoils much. It is well remunerated for those on the gravy train. The global cost worldwide is more than a $trillion. And that is money that has been spent at the expense of the poorest peoples on the planet. Military isn't shrinking. No one is phasing out police. Or lawyers. But money which might have gone to employment or food production is gone. The cost of AGW extremism is poverty for many. Many die from deprivation. They can't evolve fast enough. Julia Gillard was giving a talk in Ottawa Canada before April Fools Day. Speaking at a progress summit of her government's 'achievements.' She could have said that she implemented the tax after promising she wouldn't and then got booted for being unpopular by a person who proudly claimed he had ended the tax. Now the ALP are blocking attempts to repeal the tax they claimed they had ended after having been forced to implement what they had promised they wouldn't, by Greens. Instead, Gillard claimed pride in implementing the tax to her audience. She claims there is little resistance to it. She probably meant support. Words seem to confuse her, but she is a simple misandrist.

This column welcomes feedback and criticism. The column is not made up but based on the days events and articles which are then placed in the feed. So they may not have an apparent cohesion they would have had were they made up.

===For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/tony-abbott-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball

Mr Ball, I will not sign your petition as it will do no good, but I will share your message and ask as many of friends who read it, to share it also. Let us see if we cannot use the power of the internet to spread the word of these infamous killings. As a father and a former soldier, I cannot, could not, justify ignoring this appalling action by the perpetrators, whoever they may; I thank you Douglas. You are wrong about the petition. Signing it is as worthless and meaningless an act as voting. A stand up guy would know that. - edLorraine Allen Hider I signed the petition ages ago David, with pleasure, nobody knows what it's like until they've been there. Keep heart David take care.

I have begun a bulletin board (http://theconservativevoice.freeforums.net) which will allow greater latitude for members to post and interact. It is not subject to FB policy and so greater range is allowed in posts. Also there are private members rooms in which nothing is censored, except abuse. All welcome, registration is free.

Miranda Devine – Tuesday,March 31,2015 (11:00pm)

THE neurotic nature of the Greens’ ­appeal was laid bare on Saturday at the NSW election.

Coal seam gas was their big scare to rustle up votes and yet not one of the four electorates the Greens might have won has any gas projects.

There are plenty of hippies, knitting nannas and full-time protesters in Lismore and Ballina who travel to other parts of the country making nuisances of themselves at Lock The Gate protests, but no active CSG operations. The same goes for Labor heartland turned Greens strongholds, Balmain and Newtown. Yet, when you look at electorates where CSG extraction is going on, you find voters much more laid-back about the prospect of tapping into the vast, clean green resource underground.

In the electorate of Upper Hunter for instance, where AGL’s Gloucester gas project is a protest mecca, the Greens vote was just 5 per cent. And in the seat of Tamworth, where Santos has CSG designs in the Pilliga forest, the Greens pulled a measly 2 per cent.

The Nationals managed a 4 per cent swing towards them there at the expense of independent Peter Draper, who ran hard against CSG. As usual, scare campaigns work best when no one can see the bogeyman.

The point lost in all the ranting about coal seam gas is that the industry in NSW has virtually ground to standstill.

The Baird government has been busy buying back most of the gas exploration licences that were handed out like ­confetti by the previous Labor government.

When the Coalition came to office in 2011 almost half the state, a total of 36 million hectares, was under licence for CSG exploration. Today that figure has shrunk to less than nine million hectares, or 11 per cent of the land mass.

This is not great news for taxpayers who have had to fork out about $200,000 for each $1000 licence, but at least it’s a better option than Luke Foley’s promised moratorium on CSG, which would have seen existing contracts ripped up and investors shying away.

Resources Minister ­Anthony Roberts has frozen any new licence applications, so we’ll have to keep buying our gas from interstate.

But that is the situation we face in NSW, where irrational opposition to any efforts to provide for our future energy needs is the bread and butter of the Greens.

They may not have ­increased their vote across the state, but in seats such as Ballina, home to north coast hippie towns Nimbin and Byron Bay, the Greens reaped more than one in four votes.

With preferences from Labor, that catapults them into victory in a seat that was ­historically safe National.

In neighbouring Lismore, home to another “alternative” mecca, Murwillumbah, the Nationals’ Thomas George is just holding on, despite a viciously personal campaign against him, which included a truckload of manure being dumped outside his office. Counting is expected to drag on until after Easter.

For the Nationals, changing demographics, aka an influx of tree-changers, hippies and the rise and rise of the selfish NIMBY, poses an existential challenge.

Because population growth is concentrated on cities, every time there is a redistribution the Nationals lose another seat. They’ve gone from contesting 20 seats at the last election to winning 16, possibly 17 seats this time, in a 93-seat parliament. They face two choices — either create a new LNP party with the Liberals, Queensland style. Or they broaden their reach into metropolitan areas as Joh ­Bjelke-Petersen successfully once did in Queensland. Either that or fade away.

For Labor the threat is just as serious. This election has proved that its strategy of cosying up to the Greens and swapping preferences is doomed. The Greens are eating into Labor’s Left flank. This is a case where my enemy’s enemy is definitely not my friend. But moving to the Left, as the soft-heads in Labor advocate, is not a winning strategy. Good luck crafting policies that satisfy a schizophrenic constituency of the far left and Labor’s true believers.

For all sides of politics the answer is not to be found in slimy machine men and crafty micro-campaigning, which might squeak you into office. Premier Mike Baird has shown the way — with sound policy, courage and integrity and you can bring the electorate with you, even on unpopular issues.

On coal seam gas, despite the assessment by NSW Chief Scientist Mary O’Kane last year that the CSG industry can be safely managed if properly monitored, too many people have too many doubts.

A public inquiry into the industry could allay fears, as well as the adoption of an American-style system of land ownership under which landholders have the right to refuse drilling on their property and also at least partly own the resources underground. Farmers have every right to be angry about being cheated out of the wealth that lies under their own land, ­especially if gas companies can come in and drill without their permission.

This is the toxic opportunity exploited by the Greens. When you add sensible people who used to vote Nationals or Labor to the nutjobs, Commies, conspiracy theorists and paranoiacs who make up the traditional Greens constituency, we’re all in trouble.

Miranda Devine – Tuesday,March 31,2015 (6:00pm)

WHAT, so now it’s a sin even to talk about celebrating a sporting victory with a few alcoholic beverages?

Instead of applauding our brilliant cricketers for winning the World Cup, a worryingly large chunk of our chattering classes decided to berate them instead for having a drink afterwards. This is an international story which is ruining Australia’s laid-back fun-loving image.

Shane Warne was the lightning rod for disapproval. The Channel 9 cricket commentator’s post-match interviews his old teammates had twitter heaving with outrage.

“Are you feeling thirsty?” he asked wicketkeeper, Brad Haddin.

“Are you going to have a bit of a drink tonight too Smitty? Are you going to get thirsty as well?” he asked batsman Steve Smith

“So what’s the plan — besides lots of drink and that?” he asked Shane Watson and Josh Hazlewood. “How long is that going to last. Just one night, two nights?”

Yuk yuk, ha ha. It’s just party boy Warnie up to his old tricks. It’s no secret he loves a good time. That’s not a crime.

“Do gooders get stuffed,” Warnie tweeted the nags and punishers.

“Straya is the best place in the world, not politically correct, keep it real. Aussies celebrate properly! #thirsty.”

Newsflash: cricketers are not monks. Alcohol is not illegal.

Demonising the demon drink won’t stop people getting wasted. They’ll just get wasted on something worse. the fact is humans have celebrated with mind-altering substances since time immemorial. Our culture has chosen alcohol as our poison and most Australians manage it fine, contrary to popular belief.

But the wowsers and prohibitionists of Norman Lindsay’s day would have been thrilled at the way our culture has come full circle. Now that the Protestant ethic has gone the way of organised religion, we have the nagging lefists of social media to punish our fun.

Tim Blair – Wednesday,April 01,2015 (4:32am)

The environment is going to pieces, the ice is slowly melting. Perhaps if more factories go bust, it may slow that meltdown. I see GM in the USA is arse up, so at least there’s less smoke heating the planet.

Tim Blair – Wednesday,April 01,2015 (12:59am)

An email from reader Chris M, of Wamberal on the NSW Central Coast:

Your comment relating to David Pocock was nothing but a snide reference and a cheap shot and more revealing of you than your chosen subject. David Pocock is a man of principal, something sadly lacking in your character. The fact that he stands up for those principles, in the face of blind prejudice from the likes of you, speaks volumes of the man. Your desire to be seen as being clever and bitingly sarcastic in your articles often results in you stepping over the mark when making comment about those people who might not share your beliefs, whether they be political, environmental or social. Please think to use your words more wisely when writing future columns. Any feedback from you is most welcomed. Needless to say, I won’t be holding my breath!

Victoria’s union chiefs have unanimously called on Labor to expel
Rudd-Gillard frontbencher Martin Ferguson from the party as anger rises
over recent comments savaging the ALP and the trade union movement…
Tensions spilled over this week, with Mr Ferguson publicly supporting
the reinstatement of the hardline Australian Building and Construction
Commission… He also accused NSW Labor leader Luke Foley of “rank
opportunism” and “blatant scaremongering” in the run-up to Saturday’s
state election…
At a Friday meeting of the Victorian Trades Hall Council executive in
Melbourne, maritime union secretary Kevin Bracken moved a motion
condemning Mr Ferguson and urging the Labor Party to kick him out. It
was unanimously passed by all state leaders of affiliated unions…
Mr Bracken said Mr Ferguson’s actions were reprehensible…

“I believe it’s very important the ALP stands firm on what sort of party
they are and that they don’t support people speaking against the party
and against working people. The Labor Party has to stand on principles.”

A SENIOR union leader has publicly stated [in 2012] he
believes the September 11 terrorist attacks were a conspiracy and the
Twin Towers were imploded.
Kevin Bracken, Victorian branch secretary of the Maritime Union of
Australia and president of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, is calling
for a “proper investigation into the events of September 11’’.
“I believe the official story is a conspiracy theory that doesn’t stand
up to scientific scrutiny,’’ he told ABC radio host Jon Faine this
morning.
``There are so many unanswered questions and the official story doesn’t
stand up to scientific scrutiny, that there were four planes hijacked
for over an hour and 20 minutes yet no US planes were scrambled which is
directly against standard US air force operating procedures”
Mr Bracken also said aviation fuel did not get hot enough to melt steel
and “no high-rise steel-framed building, before or after September 11,
has ever collapsed due to fire’’…
Mr Bracken made similar claims in 2006 when he said he believed elements
of the Bush administration and the American military were involved in
the 9/11 attacks.
And he likened new anti-terror laws brought in by the US and its allies,
including Australia, to the “civic controls’’ imposed by Adolf Hitler
in 1933.

I don’t know what the law says, but I can completely understand Clive Palmer feeling cheated:

The Palmer United Party has announced plans to sue turncoat senators Jacqui Lambie and Glenn Lazarus for about $9 million for allegedly breaking their promise to represent the party in parliament.
In a statement today, the PUP’s national director Peter Burke said the
lawsuits would hinge on promises purportedly received from Senators
Lazarus and Lambie that, if elected in 2013, they would remain with the
party for their full six-year terms.
“Relying on those promises, the party spent millions of dollars and
thousands of party supporters worked hard to get Mr Lazarus and Ms
Lambie elected,” Mr Burke’s statement read.
“They have now broken their promises and the party will seek to recover
in the courts, under the principle of promissory estoppel, those party
funds.
“It is anticipated the party’s claim against Mr Lazarus will be in the
order of $7 million, equivalent to the amount the party spent in
Queensland, and more than $2 million for what was spent getting Ms
Lambie elected in Tasmania.”

Australia’s biggest 900 companies claimed
tax deductions and exemptions worth a total $25 billion last year –
enough to wipe out two-thirds of the current federal budget deficit at a
stroke.
As Treasurer Joe Hockey prompted a national “conversation” about tax
reform, including the prospect of a higher and broader GST, the
Australian Tax Office’s own data showed the top 900 companies paid an
“effective tax rate” of just 19.3 cents in the dollar on pre-tax profits
in 2014.

Reader Dave R explains the con:

The Age is at it again with another beat
up over corporate tax rates, similar to the last Tax Justice Network
false information, this time penned by Political Reporter Heath Aston.
Aston claims the 900 biggest companies are only paying an effective tax
rate of 19.3%, “costing” the government $25b in “lost tax” when
compared with the 30% corporate tax rate.
What a scandal....but then read on.
Oh, the 900 top companies include loss making companies that do not pay
tax, raising the effective tax rate to 21% when they are excluded.
And then it is disclosed the top 900 include super funds that pay 15%
tax, and other company structures that pass on tax liabilities to the
shareholder (ie pay zero tax).
But there is no disclosure what the effective tax rate is once the super
funds and other zero-tax entities are excluded. My guess it is closer
to 27%. At this level, the imaginary $25b of “lost tax: from those
cheating corporates evaporates to almost zero.
But no mention of this from The Age.

UPDATE
Reader Charles is calling out some hypocrisy:

Page 71of the Fairfax 2014 Annual Report
seems to show that it paid less than 16% Income Tax on Operations
($42,201,000 on earnings of $267,369, 000 – after expenses and
depreciation)

Plants are growing more quickly than people can cut them down, with fields and forests on the ­advance across the planet.
An Australian-led analysis of satellite data has found the amount of
carbon sequestered in plants has risen by almost four billion tonnes
since 2003, reflecting a surge in the biomass of global flora — possibly
the first such ­increase since the Industrial Revolution.
The researchers found that natural growth in northern Australia and
southern Africa had more than compensated for mass deforestation in hot
spots such as the Amazon, Borneo and Sumatra.
The upsurge, reported this morning in the journal Nature Climate Change, was driven by higher rainfall in dry savanna areas.
Tree planting in China and natural reforestation of abandoned Soviet farmland had also contributed.
The findings reflect a virtuous cycle in the warming climate, with
elevated concentrations of atmospheric CO2 speeding up photosynthesis
and causing more carbon to be captured by plants.

The Daily Telegraph can reveal Nimbin and Lismore, home of the
Australian Hemp Party and new Greens’ heartland, have one of the highest
rates of welfare recipients in the state.
The north coast region, where the Greens claimed a historic win in
Ballina and came close to taking Lismore at the weekend election, has
more than 32,000 residents on welfare, including 14,000 on the Newstart
allowance.
The unemployment rate in the Richmond-Tweed region, which includes
Nimbin, is a whopping 10.2 per cent, compared to 6.6 per cent in
Parramatta in Sydney’s west.

There are plenty of hippies, knitting
nannas and full-time protesters in Lismore and Ballina who travel to
other parts of the country making nuisances of themselves at Lock The
Gate protests, but no active CSG operations. The same goes for Labor
heartland turned Greens strongholds, Balmain and Newtown. Yet, when you
look at electorates where CSG extraction is going on, you find voters
much more laid-back about the prospect of tapping into the vast, clean
green resource underground.
In the electorate of Upper Hunter for instance, where AGL’s Gloucester
gas project is a protest mecca, the Greens vote was just 5 per cent. And
in the seat of Tamworth, where Santos has CSG designs in the Pilliga
forest, the Greens pulled a measly 2 per cent.
The Nationals managed a 4 per cent swing towards them there at the
expense of independent Peter Draper, who ran hard against CSG. As usual,
scare campaigns work best when no one can see the bogeyman.

The Baird government has been busy buying back most of the gas
exploration licences that were handed out like ­confetti by the previous
Labor government.
When the Coalition came to office in 2011 almost half the state, a total
of 36 million hectares, was under licence for CSG exploration. Today
that figure has shrunk to less than nine million hectares, or 11 per
cent of the land mass.
This is not great news for taxpayers who have had to fork out about
$200,000 for each $1000 licence… Resources Minister ­Anthony Roberts
has frozen any new licence applications, so we’ll have to keep buying
our gas from interstate.

The latte belt is clearly drawn on the map of Sydney. The [Greens]
electorates of Balmain and Newtown sit within its rim. Rockdale and
Auburn, less than 10 km to the south and west, are outside.
On Saturday, nine out of 20 voters in Newtown cast their first lower
house vote for the Greens. In Auburn and Rockdale, barely one in 20 did
the same…
The latte belt set is better educated — on paper at least — less
religious, less married and less concerned about how to pay their bills.
Four years ago the average family income in Auburn was living on about
$1160 a week. In Balmain the median family income was more than double
that — $2636 a week.
One in three Rockdale residents over 15 did not complete Year 12… In
Balmain, 44 per cent have university degrees. In Newtown, 38 per cent of
adults were graduates…
In Auburn 14 of 15 co-habiting couples are married. In Newtown, by
contrast, one in three couples live in de-facto relationships.
In both Newtown and Balmain, 35 per cent say they have no religion. In
Auburn and Rockdale, 87 per cent claim affiliation to a religion.
One way of identifying the latte belt is by occupation… In the federal
electorate of Sydney, which overlaps the state seats of both Balmain and
Newtown, there are 15 lawyers for every plumber… In the seat of
Sydney, journalists outnumber plumbers seven to one…
In Fowler on the other hand, the Labor-held federal seat that takes in
Cabramatta, there are 10 plumbers for every journalist. At the 2013
election, the Green vote was less than 4 per cent…
Green voters are not, as we once supposed, dreadlocked,
hygiene-challenged whale-lovers chained to trees. They are professional,
comfortably off, middle class people from the gentrified suburbs of
Sydney, Melbourne and, increasingly Perth and Brisbane. They are
teachers, doctors, lawyers and media professionals.
Greens voters are far more likely to earn their living from the
government purse, directly or indirectly, than from private industry.

Militia chief Mohammad Reza Naqdi also threatened Saudi Arabia, saying
that the offensive it is leading in Yemen “will have a fate like the
fate of Saddam Hussein.”
Naqdi’s comments were made public as Iran and six world powers prepared
Tuesday to issue a general statement agreeing to continue nuclear
negotiations in a new phase aimed at reaching a comprehensive accord by
the end of June.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on
Tuesday the framework Iranian nuclear agreement being sought by
international negotiators will leave Iran with the capability to develop
a nuclear weapon in under a year…

“It appears the deal being formed in Lausanne will leave Iran with
underground facilities, the nuclear reactor in Arak and with advanced
centrifuges,” Netanyahu said at a parliamentary ceremony.
“The breakout time for Iran to obtain fissile material for nuclear bombs
will not take years as was said at the beginning, in our estimation it
will be reduced to under a year and perhaps far less than that,” he
said.

As America talks to Iran, Saudi Arabia is lashing out against it.
The kingdom, Iran’s chief regional rival, is leading airstrikes against
an Iranian-backed faction in Yemen; backing a blitz in Idlib, Syria, by
jihadists fighting the Iranian-backed Assad regime; and warning
Washington not to allow the Iranian-backed militia to capture too much
of Iraq during the fight to roll back the Islamic State, according to
Arab diplomats familiar with the talks.
Through Egypt, a major beneficiary of Saudi aid, the kingdom is backing
plans for a combined Arab military force to combat Iranian influence
around the region. With another major aid recipient, Pakistan, Saudi
Arabia is also expected to step up its efforts to develop a nuclear
bomb, potentially setting off an arms race in the region.

...the third [development in the Middle East] is perhaps the most
important, which is this sort of ongoing Cold War between Shia Iran and
Arab states that are Sunni, primarily led by Saudi Arabia…
[T]here’s going to be an escalation in the conflict, which to date has
been a cold conflict, but is possibly about to go hot, between Sunni
powers and Iran. And that’s really been the backdrop to a lot of what’s
gone on since 2007-2008 when the surge began to turn things around in
Iraq.

FIRE crews and police are investigating a suspicious fire at a Catholic church in Dandenong - the third in as many days...The fire has been deemed suspicious.
It comes after fires on Monday at St James in Brighton and St Mary’s in
St Kilda East - two parishes home to notorious paedophile priest, Ron
Pickering.
According to Broken Rites, St Mary’s Catholic Church is Dandenong was “a
crime scene for many years” when Father Kevin O’Donnell abused
children.

Some in the media would also be among the unsettled and the disenchanted today.
They ran a relentless campaign — on the back of unsubstantiated
accusations of drug use and a belief the old Windy Hill was nothing but a
clandestine and dangerous drug den — to have Hird booted out of the
AFL.
When the investigation was at its most frenzied, some even won major media awards.
They played judge, jury and executioner on the basis of misinformation.
It was a sensational story, in which Hird was the No. 1 villain.
Asked yesterday how many times he had been asked to stand down, Hird
quipped: “By journalists?” He added: “I was asked to stand down, but
that’s the past.’’
At one time, Hird was said to have been warned by the AFL about the use of peptides.
On the day that the story broke, the AFL just happened to make an
amendment to the original notes, which had been taken two years earlier.
At another time, it was written that Essendon was being investigated for
the use of 35 different drugs when, at the end, it was the use of only
one — Thymosin (whether referred to as Thymosin beta-4 or Thymomdulin) —
that was alleged.
There were continual references to off-site and subcutaneous injections,
and midnight text messages, and AOD-9604, and calves’ blood, and pigs’
guts, and Mexican jumping beans, and whatever else the propaganda
machine was spitting out.

In early February, as James Hird’s world began to
unravel, he still didn’t get it. Sitting alongside his chairman and his
chief executive at AFL head office, the Essendon legend, premiership
captain and now coach said: ‘’I’m shocked to be sitting here.’’
Two months later, as the evidence against Hird continues to deeply
disturb those who are investigating him, that claim seems fanciful… So
many players could potentially be banned by the Australian Sports
Anti-Doping Authority, all of whom were assured by their coach and club
hero during 2012 that they broke no rules…
The most honourable move for Hird now would be to resign… [T]he coach
can still not guarantee that those young men - whose bodies were
experimented with in such cavalier fashion - will not be punished as
drug cheats.

The AFL warned James Hird in late 2011 to not involve his players in a peptides program.
Sources close to the joint investigation by ASADA and the AFL into
Essendon have told Fairfax Media that the AFL warning came after senior
league officials had learnt that Hird had been investigating the
anti-doping status of certain peptides…
The AFL had allegedly been told that Hird was investigating peptides in
his determination to introduce a high-performance program heavily
punctuated with substances that would prove to be a new frontier in the
fast-tracked strength and conditioning of his senior team…
Hird, a club legend, premiership captain and Australian Football Hall of
Famer, has emerged as an enthusiast behind the injecting program while
insisting that he put caveats on the treatment of his players.
They included the proviso that all substances must be WADA compliant and
that no harm would come to his players. The only public evidence of
those caveats has come in the form of an email to the now suspended
high-performance boss, Dean Robinson, sent by Hird in January 2012…
On Tuesday, Essendon released a statement, in which it denied Hird had been warned by the AFL.

James Hird’s coaching career could have been
salvaged in February on the day he said with straight and solemn face
that he was ‘’shocked’’ to be sitting in the uncomfortable position that
he was…

In April, too, when the depth of Hird’s involvement in the perilous
drugs program he pushed, embraced and involved himself in was first
revealed, he could have stood aside and worked to salvage his reputation
and help his club.
Instead, in choosing to place himself and his precious reputation above
that of the game he once made more beautiful but has now helped make so
ugly, Hird looks finished… At some point, if the club is to resolve this
war with the AFL, it must cut Hird loose… Hypocritically, he stated he
was a victim of a ‘’trial by media’’, which was a bit rich given the
spinning he has orchestrated in recent months…
If only Hird had not experimented with the lives of his players.

The Essendon drugs saga defined the 2013 AFL season
and dominated media in Melbourne for months. Caroline Wilson led the
running, breaking news and framing the issue better than any other
journalist. Her commentary was fearlessly independent, calling out the
game’s administration, club officials and its favourite son, coach James
Hird. Her voice was the strongest, the most consistent and the one most
vindicated by the ongoing investigation.

Caroline Wilson, The Age, has won the Graham Perkin Australian
Journalist of the Year Award for her coverage of the drugs scandal
involving the Essendon Football Club…
She wrote these articles amid what the judges – Laura Tingle (chair),
Laurie Oakes and Jill Baker – called “some extraordinary personal
abuse”.
Mr Oakes said, on behalf of the judges, that in deciding the winner,
they “considered the clear-eyed way Ms Wilson both reported on the story
of the Australian Football League drugs scandal, and analysed the
impact of the events on those most directly affected by them: the
players who had been injected with substances which might compromise
their health and destroy their football careers”.

The Tribunal was not comfortably satisfied that any player was administered Thymosin Beta-4.
The Tribunal was not comfortably satisfied that any player violated clause 11.2 of the AFL Anti-Doping Code.

Wilson was right to be scathing of the craze at Essendon for injecting
players and the very loose administration of that regime. But the main
and most devastating allegation made by officials against Essendon was
actually that it was giving players illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

What alarms Labor
numbers merchant Senator Sam Dastyari most? A great servant of Labor who
calls out a dishonest and racist Labor campaign that will hurt the
poor, or a lying Labor MP who trousered union members’ money to pay for
prostitutes?
Chris Kenny:

Martin Ferguson, a former ACTU president and former
federal minister who has an impeccable record of party service as well
as policy and political clout, faces expulsion because he belled the cat
on a dishonest and xenophobic Labor scare campaign…
The way NSW Labor ran deceptive claims about power prices and a
ludicrous scare about how Chinese interests could sabotage the
electricity network did the party no credit…
But rather than admit their error and start heading to higher ground the
numbers men of the ALP are seeking revenge against Ferguson and other
truth-tellers such as former Labor NSW treasurer Michael Costa who dared
to challenge the party’s descent into misleading and xenophobic
fear-mongering.
That Senator Sam Dastyari is leading the charge compounds the irony — or
audacity. Dastyari was NSW state secretary when Thomson was challenging
claims of fraud against him and the ALP funded his legal bills.
Investigations at Thomson’s Health Services Union began in 2008 when
Thomson was already in federal parliament and he was reindorsed by the
party for the 2010 election. Then, with Julia Gillard clinging to
minority government, he wasn’t banished from the party until 2012.
The contrast between the years given over to defending Thomson’s
dishonesty and the swift retaliation against Ferguson’s honesty is
damning.

When he was a Labor MP, the NSW ALP
stumped up about $350,000 towards Mr Thomson’s defence of allegations
that while he was national secretary of the Health Services Union, from
2002 to 2007, he spent large amounts of union members’ contributions on
prostitutes, airfares for family and friends, and high living.
Mr Thomson strenuously denies the allegations.
At the time, Senator Dastyari said the spending was crucial to
maintaining Mr Thomson’s vote for Labor, because had he gone bankrupt he
would have had to resign from parliament, leading to a by-election for
his marginal NSW seat of Dobell.

Former NSW Labor premier Morris Iemma has launched a blistering
attack on the Labor Party, saying moves to kick veteran Martin Ferguson
out of the party are “petty and vindictive” and shows the party is
“intolerant and incapable of embracing divergent views”.
Mr Iemma hailed Mr Ferguson as a Labor luminary who had over the last
five decades been involved in landmark issues that have produced
“massive benefits for the entire working class"…
Mr Iemma’s passionate defence of Mr Ferguson’s legacy for the Labor
movement is in stark contrast to federal Labor leader Bill Shorten who
offered no defence of his former cabinet colleague and called for a
proper investigation into Mr Ferguson’s appearance in [a] Liberal ad…
Speaking from China, Mr Shorten said the Labor Party’s administration
would investigate whether Mr Ferguson was just expressing a different
view or working to damage Labor’s chances.

When both interviewer
and interviewee first bought the spin, neither has an interest in
revealing who precisely said what when they next chat.
February 2013:

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: It’s a day of shame for Australian sport A
12-month investigation by Australia’s top crime body has found
performance-enhancing drug use is widespread in the major sporting
codes, a habit fed by organised crime....
RICHARD INGS, FORMER ASADA HEAD: Well it’s the blackest day in
Australian sport. The Australian public hopes that Australian sport is
clean. Today we saw the underbelly.

LEIGH SALES: What’s your take on today’s ruling?
RICHARD INGS: Well today is a huge setback for ASADA. We need to
remember that ASADA has charged 34 players, 34 elite professional
footballers with very serious violations of anti-doping rules, but when
it came to the crunch of presenting the evidence to the tribunal, ASADA
lost on all counts…
LEIGH SALES: How does that “blackest day in sport” announcement look now in hindsight?
RICHARD INGS: Well, two years ago, some incredibly serious allegations
were levelled by the most senior members of sport and politics in regard
to the conduct of athletes in Australian sport. There may have been
some fire behind a lot of that smoke, but the problem was those
allegations were made before the investigation had in most cases even
been started. The learning of this is that people should not be making
allegations against players of violations of anti-doping rules until the
investigation is concluded and the facts are clear and able to be
presented and a tribunal rules and issues a verdict.

Tim Blair – Tuesday,April 01,2014 (4:19pm)

The ABC’s Q & A usually serves up a lumpy left-wing stew sourced from primarily local ingredients. For the sake of diversity, last night’s show featured standard leftoid lines from a variety of international types. Here’s the American head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, reflecting on what host Tony Jones described as Australia’s “return to such an anachronistic form of honours”:

Well, it’s sadly characteristic of this Government now.

Somalian peace advocate Ilwad Elman agreed:

It seems like Australia is regressing.

How’s Somalia going, Ilwad? Made it out of the 15th century yet? Egyptian activist and commentator Mona Eltahawy turned out to be a regular Sweary Mary:

I come from a country that was under British occupation for so many years and when we got rid of the Brits finally in 1952 and they asked us if we wanted to join the Commonwealth, we said “F**k no”.

Language, dear. Of course, moany Mona is no fan of Tony Abbott:

Your Prime Minister is a walking anachronistic - I don’t know what else to call him.

Try a noun. There are lots available. Mona became more expressive on the topic of white guys:

The people who go on the most about freedom of expression and it’s my right to say this and my right to say that are usually old, rich, white men who parade under the term libertarian. And what it ends up basically meaning is: I have the right to be a racist and sexist s**t.

British ethics columnist Lucy Siegle chimes in:

I think we’re looking at protecting the wrong people.

And now back to Mona, describing a sign she saw on the New York subway that made her so angry she vandalised it:

It said: “In the war between the civilised man and the savage, always choose the civilised man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” And I thought: are you f**king kidding me?

Seems f**king reasonable enough to me. Roth next makes a point about stopped asylum seeker boats:

Well, first, if I could, just let me address the 100 days without a boat because, you know, the question really is how did that happen. You know, if I said we’re going to execute everybody who shows up in a boat, the boats would stop. Is that a fair way to do it? No.

Is that even close to what Australia is doing? No. Further from Somalia’s Elman:

I think Australia is taking a lot of very horrific positions and putting itself in very difficult situations … some of the topics that we discussed here today it’s just showing a whole new Australia that I never really thought about before and people are going to be shocked by this new position and this movement.

It’s called an elected government. Shocking, I know, but that’s just the way we do things down here. Oh, great, here’s f**king Mona again:

I think sometimes it helps in these discussions to get really down to the bare bones and just say it as it is and that is people are scared of brown and black people coming into your country.

Yep. We’re all terrifying racists. Last word to Siegle:

It’s sounding pretty toxic.

Sure is. It’s just as well all of these people have nice countries to return to, so they won’t have to suffer any longer.

Tim Blair – Tuesday,April 01,2014 (12:40pm)

Last night’s episode of Q&A was one of the most outrageously and offensively biased of an ABC show that has been uniformly biased.
It was also an insight into the broad Left’s loathing of free speech and the West, and into the racism that informs its anti-racist posturing.Jewish readers should note one part in particular: the unchallenged account of one panellist telling how anti-"hate-speech" activism can be used against defenders of Israel. This is a point I’ve tried to warn Jewish leaders about again and again. Here is how the show unfolded.FIRST, STACK THE PANEL

Host Tony Jones stacked the panel with known Leftists: Egyptian activist and commentator Mona Eltahawy, Somalian peace and human rights advocate Ilwad Elman; The Observer’s ethics columnist Lucy Siegle; and the international head of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth. Add Jones and the count was five people of the Left to a single panellist, Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson, who is not.

NEXT, ATTACK THE TOKEN NON-LEFTIST

Even those odds - five to one - were still not good enough for Jones, who ambushed Wilson with a set-up. Jones devoted the second question to hostile videos from viewers attacking Wilson like no other panellist was attacked:

ROBERT MAYNARD: Tim Wilson’s comments to The Age this weekend calling it bizarre that racial terms may be used freely within communities of colour but not by white people and claiming free use of the N word would restore equality, revealed a breathtaking lack of comprehension…

ATTACK EVERY “BIGOTRY” BUT THE LEFT’S

Everyone agreed abusing people was wrong and no one had a right to be a bigot:

KENNETH ROTH: … the Attorney-General … should be saying “Bigotry is wrong.” That’s what a public officials should do.MONA ELTAHAWY: Yes. ILWAD ELMAN: I think that particular statement people have the right to become bigots is very worrisome… At what point is the right to freedom of speech crossing on hate?

But not a single panellist then protested at the bigotry of one panellist who twice vilified free speech advocates as “old, rich, white men”, who must of course be racist and sexist:

MONA ELTAHAWY: First of all, in the United States, the people who go on the most about freedom of expression and it’s my right to say this and my right to say that are usually old, rich, white men who parade under the term libertarian. And what it ends up basically meaning is: I have the right to be a racist and sexist shit and I’m protected by the first amendment… MONA ELTAHAWY: The reason that they said that, actually, you know, this is actually all about the free market. This is why I am bringing in the rich, old, white men.

SLANDER GADFLIES, SATIRISTS, CONSERVATIVES, ENEMIES OF JIHAD AND FRIENDS OF ISRAEL AND DEMAND THEY BE SILENCED

Everyone bar Tim Wilson seemed to agree using the law to silence certain people they vilify as “bigots” or racists was great:

LUCY SIEGLE: So what I would like to say is that there are a lot of contrarian columnists around. I have worked in newspapers for years… From the moment the printing press was invented there were people who worked out if you take a contrarian, shock jock point of view, you’re going to get a lot of attention and a lot of money. I don’t think we should change laws to protect their freedom of speech. We have a similar issue in the UK, where we have contrarian columnists and certain comedians who aren’t very funny but bigotry is part of their act and the whole debate is centred around how we can protect them and enable their free speech and I think we’re looking at protecting the wrong people…

But one panellist, Eltahawy, demonstrated how dangerously loose the term “bigot” now is – how it can actually be used to attack those fighting bigotry. Eltahawy seemed to argue that to support a democracy against a fascist terrorist movement was actually racist, and the position of “hate groups”:

MONA ELTAHAWY [speaking of a subway sign she defaced]: It said: “In the war between the civilised man and the savage, always choose the civilised man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” And I thought: are you f…ing kidding me? In my subway? How can you put this up? And the subway - the subway authorities did not want this ad, because they said it was going to incite people and so they took it to the hate group and it’s been classified as a hate group by the - it’s the Southern [Poverty] Law Centre… They have deemed it a hate group. They have deep pockets, these libertarian, you know, old rich white men. And they took it to a judge and the judge deemed it protected political speech. I am fine with protected political speech but surely it should be my right to protest racism and bigotry? … But my fight here is the kind of language used in the ad and what is acceptable now and you were saying earlier that it’s not just the law…

HATE THE WEST

Eltahawy painted the West as the home of bigots and sell-outs. No speakers protested, and some added further condemnation of Australia:

MONA ELTAHAWY: I now live in Egypt but I was in the US for 13 years, Muslims are fair game. MONA ELTAHAWY: I would like to know, one, the name of at least one western country that has this so-called ethical foreign policy that we often hear about. I think most western countries have disgraceful records … I think your main concern is to sell our regimes and our dictators weapons. You turn a blind eye to torture…MONA ELTAHAWY: … none of you do absolutely anything to help us. You’ve always sold us out, so what’s new?… MONA ELTAHAWY: I think sometimes it helps in these discussions to get really down to the bare bones and just say it as it is and that is people are scared of brown and black people coming into your country. And that’s essentially what it is.

(Note: Eltahawy protested for the removal of the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt. Now she protests against the military regime that inevitably replaced it.)

ABUSE AUSTRALIA, AND ESPECIALLY ITS LIBERAL GOVERNMENT:

All but Tim Wilson agreed the Government was hopeless and anachronistic, even the host:

TONY JONES: Yeah. Are you surprised, though, that we would go for such an anachronistic form or return to such an anachronistic form of honours?KENNETH ROTH: Well, it’s sadly characteristic of this Government now…ILWAD ELMAN: …it seems like Australia is regressing a little bit …MONA ELTAHAWY: …I think, you know, your Prime Minister is a walking anachronistic - I don’t know what else to call him - Prime Minister …ILWAD ELMAN: I think Australia is taking a lot of very horrific positions and putting itself in very difficult situations. They’re cuddling up with Sri Lanka, cutting off the boats and celebrating they haven’t had - they have had 100 days of no boats coming in, talking about how Australians should be bigots… LUCY SIEGLE: Just, as Ilwad said, some of the positions that the Australian Government is taking on behalf of the nation, they sound toxic to outsiders.

USE ABUSIVE LANGUAGE, THE LANGUAGE OF BARBARIANS

One panelist had no trouble with using offensive language after all, and no one dared protest her lack of courtesy and civility:

MONA ELTAHAWY: ... they asked us if we wanted to join the Commonwealth, we said “F… no"…. And I thought: are you f…ing kidding me?.... we’re truly well and truly f…ed… So you can see why I say we are well and truly f…ed

DEMONISE OUR ATTEMPTS TO CONTROL OUR BORDERS

Everyone seemed critical of the Abbott Government’s boat people policy, and when one audience member put a contrary view a panellist and the host badgered him and misled and misinformed him with a grossly offensive analogies and what a judge would call factual inaccuracies:

ANDREW WILSON [audience member]: The death at Manus Island was a tragedy. People are obviously desperate when they have paid thousands of dollars to people smugglers and have no hope of coming here. Yet, why did the ABC show no similar outrage for the thousands of deaths caused by the dismantling of the Pacific Solution? TONY JONES: I will go to Ken Roth on this and this is the justification for stopping the boats, that thousands of people died at sea. Before we do, I will just quickly take issue with your point there, because I reject the characterisation of the ABC’s role in this. In fact, some of the most graphic reporting on this was done by ABC reporters, including finding ships that nobody even knew had been lost at sea and finding the detail on those. So I just discount what you are saying. ANDREW WILSON: Well, I take issue with that. You never once opposed the previous Government’s policy in my reading of the ABC…

(NOTE: Wilson is right. I do not recall the ABC covering any of the first drownings. I recall the ABC instead running for years with the Labor Government’s deceitful claim that boat people weren’t actually being lured to their deaths by the policies made too soft. I recall the ABC mocking Abbott’s promise to turn back the boats, a promise he’s actually fulfilled. And note, seconds earlier Jones was still attacking as too harsh the measures the Government took to stop the boats – and the drownings.)

TONY JONES: OK. Alright. Ken Roth? KENNETH ROTH: Well, first, if I could, just let me address the 100 days without a boat because, you know, the question really is how did that happen. You know, if I said we’re going to execute everybody who shows up in a boat, the boats would stop. Is that a fair way to do it? No.

(NOTE: What an utterly bizarre analogy. Nothing remotely so cruel is being proposed and never would be. Fact: the harm averted outweights the harm caused. Fewer people are drowning, fewer people are in detention, and fewer boat people are taking the places of genuine refugees.)

ANDREW WILSON: Look, we can take a lot - immigration has been great for the country and we can take a lot more immigrants but you can’t take people to put them onto the dole....KENNETH ROTH: Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. So what is the assumption here: that because somebody seeks asylum they go on the dole?ANDREW WILSON: No. But… KENNETH ROTH: I mean, please… My father was an asylum seeker.... He fled Nazi Germany. He went to New York… Do you think he was ever, for one minute of his life, on the dole? And I think that is the norm for asylum seekers.

(NOTE: Completely false. A Department of Immigration survey in 2011 confirmed that 85 per cent of refugees were on social security payments even after five years here – including 94 per cent of all Afghan refugees. Wilson was right, Roth very wrong.)

AND ADD GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM

And what’s a Q&A episode without some global warming alarmism?

LUCY SIEGLE: If you saw the intergovernmental panel on climate change issuing today the 300 scientists who have come to the consensus on what’s happening with climate change, it is not good news. And one of the things that it will mean is that more and more people will have to migrate. So we are looking at increasingly large numbers of people who need somewhere else to be, need somewhere else to live for environmental reasons …

Look at Q&A and despair. A culture of savage nihilism is engulfing us, and our right to even protest is being stripped away.
UPDATEMore from Tim Blair.
ABC managing director Mark Scott is about to deliver a big lecture tonight on the media. He will say that claims the ABC is biased are exaggerated.

It is so extremely rare - possibly even unprecedented - for the taxpayer-fundedConversation to publish articles by academics questioning global warming alarmism that it merits noting this one.
But wait. There is a caveat, of course. The author doesn’t question that global warming is serious, of course - just that it is, er, not quite that serious:
Randal G Stewart, lecturer in Public Sector Management at University of Canberra, writes:

Climate change is a problem for democracy. The scientific modelling is compelling and the evidence alarming.... Science alone is not enough to sway democratic decision making, but scientists fractured support by conflating weather with climate modelling.To show that climate change causes extreme weather it would be necessary to prove that greenhouse gases create events that are not caused by observed weather patterns such as La Niña or El Niño.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states there is “low confidence” in attributing any changes in tropical cyclone activity to greenhouse gas emissions or anything else humanity has done. Unfortunately, Australia’s most prominent climate scientists have fallen into the trap of suggesting global warming is causing extreme weather events. The issue here is whether it is wise for scientists to embrace a narrative that they know is not substantiated by the science for the purpose of building public support.

The IPCC’s latest suite of climate models overstate, by more than double, the actual warming in Australia from January 1979 to January 2014. This is the conclusion from expert analysis by US-based independent climate researcher Bob Tisdale… The models’ overstated warming on a global basis is no longer contentious. As even the 5th IPCC report acknowledges, from 1998-2012 the simulations of 111 out of its 114 climate models exaggerated the global warming trend. The IPCC blames a variety of factors, including natural variability, solar, volcanic and aerosol impacts, and over-cooking of the all-important climate sensitivity to CO2 increases.Tisdale’s graphic for the Australian mismatch between IPCC modelling (red) and reality (blue) is below…

Tisdale says, “The CSIRO model more than doubles the observed warming rate for Australia since 1979. It’s not as bad as the mean of all of the models used by the IPCC, but more than doubling the actual warming rate is still a very bad performance, especially apropos of the CSIRO’s own country.”

A Christian street preacher was wrongly arrested and held in a police cell for almost 19 hours after quoting verses from the Bible. John Craven, 57, recited from Revelation after two gay teenagers asked about his views on homosexuality.But after he read from chapter 21, verse eight – which says sinners will burn in a lake of fire and sulphur – police arrested him on suspicion of committing a public order offence…He was fingerprinted, had to give a sample of his DNA and told he was being investigated for allegedly using insulting words with the intention of causing harassment, alarm or distress – which could have led to a six-month jail sentence… .Yesterday he was awarded £13,000 in compensation after a three-year legal battle against Greater Manchester Police which is estimated to have cost the public purse £50,000.

The labour movement’s leadership must take swift action against the ­militant construction union after a record court fine and unprecedented criminal sanction for its blockade of a Grocon building site in Melbourne, says former Labor leader Simon Crean. Mr Crean said the ACTU leadership had a responsibility to act after the ­Victorian Supreme Court issued a $1.25 million fine and unprecedented criminal convictions to the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union union for contempt of court."They need to get their house in order. They need to control the rogue elements...” ACTU secretary Dave Oliver criticised Mr Crean for airing his views in public. “We appreciate that people have views on the union movement; however, at a time when workers and their representatives are under an unprecedented attack from conservatives that want to weaken the union movement, a phone call would be appreciated instead of views being raised via the media,” he said.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Sunset at Montmajour may be your favourite painting for its sublime and serene use of colours but for a group of Greek and German scientists it may provide vital clues about how the Earth’s atmosphere was when Van Gogh painted it. Their article is published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, according to a press release. According to the scientists, analysing the colors of the sunsets in paintings can give an idea of the level of ash, gas, and other pollutants that may have been present in the atmosphere at that time.

Seems to me from one van Gogh painting that the world’s atmosphere has become a lot friendlier:

Julia Gillard’s speech in chilly Ottawa over the weekend ... takes the breath away. Speaking at the first “progress summit” of the Broadbent Institute, Gillard catalogued her government’s many achievements – disability care, something about schools, something else… But the main subject was the non-event that was the implementation of a price on carbon in Australia. “While I was prime minister leading a minority government, I secured, through the Parliament, legislation to put a price on carbon,” she said, proudly.Gillard then rattled off the “carbon tax” campaign, the “Ditch the Witch” (and worse) placards and the other colour and movement of that unhappy time in Australian politics.“But a funny thing happened once the carbon price was introduced. People moved on. It went from being an emotional, absolute front of mind issue to being one in the background… Lived experience beat fear.” ... There is a counter narrative in this southern land, which involves a broken promise, the toppling her prime ministership and the election of a chap sworn on tearing the thing down. But why bother the Canadians with all that detail?

The awards system for public service is not a big issue. The much more important issue is the idea that Australian PMs have a general licence to make decisions unilaterally… There is good reason to abide by the idea of the PM being “first among equals”. It reminds PMs that they are not god. A decision made in the cabinet keeps everybody in the tent. When everyone is in the tent the sense of camaraderie is enhanced… Consultation in the cabinet brings to bear the experience and knowledge of the group.Unfortunately, Abbott has developed a liking for unilateral decisions. I am not sure any of his unilateral decisions have been either good for him personally, good for the party or the country. Recent Abbott decisions, nearly all made in opposition, have included the paid parental leave, public funding for political parties (later turfed by an irate Liberal federal executive), the local government referendum (where Abbott was saved by the informal campaign of his Coalition troops) and the decisions to dump individual agreements (Coalition industrial relations policy for nearly 20 years) and the “dead, buried and cremated” labour market policy at the start of the 2010 elections. There will be more. He is already committed to a referendum on recognition of indigenous Australians. Already, under Labor, this issue has not been as well managed. Abbott has a truly compassionate commitment to the indigenous cause and I respect him for his genuine interest in social policy. But the reality is that he is locked in to a referendum even though the words have not been agreed and before a process has been established for broader involvement by the Australian public. The public do not like unilateral decisions about their constitution; if the public are not brought into the process at the start, the chances of success are reduced.

UPDATE
The latest IPCC report is written in part by people which such apocalyptic views that they cannot be taken seriously - except in this case by the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Earth is warming so rapidly that unless humans can arrest the trend, we risk becoming ‘’extinct’’ as a species, a leading Australian health academic has warned. Helen Berry, associate dean in the faculty of health at the University of Canberra, said while the Earth has been warmer and colder at different points in the planet’s history, the rate of change has never been as fast as it is today. ‘’What is remarkable, and alarming, is the speed of the change since the 1970s, when we started burning a lot of fossil fuels in a massive way,’’ she said. ‘’We can’t possibly evolve to match this rate [of warming] and, unless we get control of it, it will mean our extinction eventually.’’

Professor Berry is one of three leading academics who have contributed to the health chapter of a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report due on Monday. She and co-authors Tony McMichael, of the Australian National University, and Colin Butler, of the University of Canberra, have outlined the health risks of rapid global warming in a companion piece for The Conversation… ‘’Human-driven climate change poses a great threat, unprecedented in type and scale, to wellbeing, health and perhaps even to human survival,’’ they write.

UPDATE
Of course, if the world really were about to end in a fireball you would certainly not be bored, But catastrophist Tom Arup finds consumer resistance even among the audience of The Age:

THE good sense and informed self-interest — the wisdom of (Aussie) crowds — shines through in a scientific poll from Galaxy Research on attitudes to Global Warming (sic). The poll result can be captured in two conclusions. We don’t believe it’s necessarily happening — to coin a phrase; we are mostly climate sceptics now. And therefore, we sure as hell ain’t prepared to pay real dollars to ‘stop it’…In 2010, the Galaxy poll showed 35 per cent endorsement of the proposition that “the world is warming and man’s emissions are to blame”. The latest poll showed it had edged up only to 37 per cent.Yes, this was significantly higher than those endorsing the proposition that “the variation in global temperature is just part of the natural cycle of nature”; which had dipped from 26 per cent in 2010 to 24 per cent now. The really significant number was the unchanged 38 per cent endorsing the proposition “there is conflicting evidence and I’m not sure what the truth is”.By any objective — as opposed to theologically warmist — assessment, this is the rational attitude… So the poll shows a clear majority of 62 per cent of Australians are either sceptical or denialist. As a consequence, we are increasingly unwilling to throw money at ‘the problem (sic)’… There is a very, very clear plurality of 41 per cent that are willing to pay nothing, zero, zip — who, my comment, presumably want the carbon tax to go; and that it should be followed quick smart out the door by the expensive rort of wind and solar power. This is up from 35 per cent in 2010.

This matters because – if I may speak freely – plenty of white people (even ordinary reasonable ones) are good at telling coloured people what they should and shouldn’t find racist, without even the slightest awareness that they might not be in prime position to make that call.

But Cater to the rescue. He proposes a slight change to section 3 to satisfy Aly’s concern. Are we all happy now?:

That is not my opinion. It has never been my opinion. Nor have I ever disputed anyone’s right to identify as Aboriginal, other than a handful of people in notorious cases (the Wanda Koolmatrie hoax, the Mudrooroo Narogin case) where individuals had actually pretended to have Aboriginal ancestors. And were I allowed to quote from my banned articles I could show Mundine how wrong he is to so mischaracterise my arguments there.
My argument has always been what I once thought was simple: that people with grandparents of various “races” or “ethnicities” have a choice to identify with one, all or none of those “races” or ethnicities themselves. Skin color is relevant in this debate only in suggesting certain people have such a choice open to them.
My argument was ruled by the judge to be factually wrong in the case of those I mentioned. Mundine may agree with that verdict, but he has no right to accuse me of holding opinions I have never expressed and always repudiated.

Again, how did our immigration authorities allow such a person or his family to come here in the first place? And will they keep him out in future?

A PROMINENT Sydney sheik who travelled to Syria to join the country’s jihadist opposition is offering Islamic instruction, mediation and legal services for banned terrorist group Jabhat al- Nusra.The al-Qa’ida-linked organisation released a statement detailing the role played by Sheik Abu Sulayman, 30, who The Australian revealed last week had become a senior figure in its ranks…“He has also helped to ­establish many Islamic programs, travelling around Syria offering Islamic instruction, mediation and legal services to both the muhajireen and Ansar as well as everyday citizens.’’… Security services estimate that 120 to 150 Australians are participating in the Syrian conflict, almost all of whom are with Islamist groups such as al-Nusra or ISIS… The confirmation came as a report released yesterday by the Lowy Institute for International Policy warns the Syrian conflict, along with renewed instability in the Middle East, risks becoming the incubator for a new generation of terrorists. Aside from Syria, the report singles out continued unrest in Egypt as a driver for ­extremism.

Egyptian-born Mostafa Mahamed, who goes by the name Abu Sulayman in Syria, had preached in Islamic centres across Sydney and worked at an Arabic school in Bankstown before leaving the country… Online biographies describe him as founder and director of Bankstown Arabic school Knowledge House; his Facebook page, recently deleted, said he had a masters degree in education from Sydney University…

According to his deleted Facebook page, which remains viewable in Google’s cache, Sheik Sulayman delivered lectures at various universities in Australia and the Middle East.

CLIVE Palmer’s prized asset is under threat of being closed down by federal authorities seeking to recover looming debts of $36 million.Government agencies are moving to force the company, Queensland Nickel, into insolvency if it cannot pay a carbon tax bill that will triple over the year ahead as penalties apply… Mr Palmer, the federal MP for the Queensland seat of Fairfax, refused to pay a $6.2m carbon tax bill due last June and has launched a High Court action to declare it unconstitutional.

UPDATE
Cry for Australia that Clive Palmer has reduced political campaigning to this:

OOPS - VIDEO WAS REPLACED AT THE LINK. APOLOGIES.
Has Palmer decided to campaign for the moron vote? A bad result in this weekend’s WA Senate result, to follow his 5 per cent flop in Tasmania, should finish him - apart from the troubling matter of his two Senators and their Motoring Enthusiasts’ ally.
(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and foggyfig.)

University of NSW lecturer Fiona Johnson is scientist-in-residence at Fairfax newspapers, where her brief seems to be to whip up fear of global warming - even though her doctorate is actually in civil engineering.
I’m afraid that lack of expertise is showing today:

Johnson claims:

The devastating earthquake followed by typhoon Haiyan that battered the Philippines late last year really hit home for me… [If] poverty and lack of resources aren’t big enough problems to overcome, it is becoming increasingly clear that the poorest communities and nations will face large challenges in trying to deal with the impacts of climate change. The release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group II report on Monday provides yet another wake-up call that the impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed around the world.

In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low… Over periods of a century or more, evidence suggests slight decreases in the frequency of tropical cyclones making landfall in the North Atlantic and the South Pacific, once uncertainties in observing methods have been considered. Little evidence exists of any longer-term trend in other ocean basins… Several studies suggest an increase in intensity, but data sampling issues hamper these assessments…

Next Johnson claims:

For our neighbours in the Pacific, where small communities live on atolls that are only a few metres above sea level, adaptation may not be possible. You can’t build infrastructure to protect people if there is no land left. The IPCC points out that rising sea levels mean that life on these atolls will, at some stage, become impossible.

In fact, coral atolls tend to grow and collect sediment to adjust to sea levels. Result, as a recent peer-reviewed study noted:

Low-lying atoll islands are widely perceived to erode in response to measured and future sea level rise. Using historical aerial photography and satellite images this study presents the first quantitative analysis of physical changes in 27 atoll islands in the central Pacific over a 19 to 61 year period. This period of analysis corresponds with instrumental records that show a rate of sea level rise of 2.0 mm.y-1 in the Pacific. Results show that 86% of islands remained stable (43%) or increased in area (43%) over the timeframe of analysis. Largest decadal rates of increase in island area range between 0.1 to 5.6 hectares. Only 14% of study islands exhibited a net reduction in island area.

Or put it this way: Pacific islands have been three times more likely to grow that to shrink during this period of global warming alarmist. And nearly half do neither.Johnson ploughs on:

On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report on the impacts of global warming. Here are 10 ways that climate change will affect you in your home. 1. Rising power bills from using your airconditioner: With temperatures set to rise between 0.6 and 1.5 degrees by 2030, your airconditioner use will become a significant expense. On the plus side your heating costs will most likely go down. Heating and cooling account for 15 to 25 per cent of a typical Sydney household’s electricity use.

In fact, the biggest factor driving up the cost of your airconditioner is not the man-made increase in hot days, and especially not when global temperatures have not risen for 16 years. A far bigger driver of power prices is global warming alarmism, responsible for adding a carbon tax and a renewable energy target impost onto every bill. Global warmists, not global warming, is driving up your power bills.
Every day and in every way you are being misled by warmist reporting in our media. One day there will be the big accounting of those who went with the hysterical mob and failed to honor the facts.

The course seems to have been inspiring. Blair is prompted to write some of his finest satire:

Ricketts compared the activist movement to the human body’s natural defence mechanism. “We are the immune system,” he said. “We’ll always be running towards infection.” Whoa! Julia Gillard faced mockery for her 2011 ALP conference speech, containing the memorable line: “We are us.” Infection-chasing Ricketts has taken that one step further: “We are pus.” ... One of the female presenters had such a severe upward inflection problem that the last syllable of every sentence could only be heard by bats.

‘REGISTERED sex offender, Ali Jaffari, accused of attempted child-stealing, has had all charges against him dropped after a Magistrate told prosecutors he would have trouble finding Jaffari guilty. Magistrate Ron Saines said if he was hearing the matter, he would have reasonable doubt, citing ‘cultural differences’ as one factor, which would result in the charges being dismissed’.

This was a case involving a convicted sex offender. A child stalker who was placed on the sex offenders register only last year after being convicted of sexually assaulting two teenage boys at a local beach.On that occasion he walked free with community service…Apparently Jaffari is an Afghan refugee with cultural differences. Is it culturally acceptable there for adults to sexually assault children? I doubt it. But even if it were, it is abhorrent here and our laws say so…According to the Advertiser, the 35-year-old paedophile was convicted in Geelong Magistrates’ Court in August last year of indecently assaulting one boy and attempting to indecently assault another.He was placed on a two-year Community Corrections Order with 300 hours unpaid community work…In court this week he was charged with child stealing, attempted child stealing and unlawful assault.He allegedly went to Bakers Oval in Geelong West about 6.30pm on January 27, 2013 where a four-year-old girl was playing cricket with her father and brother. While the father was throwing the ball to his son in the nets, the little girl was playing nearby with her own bat. Jaffari took away her bat, grabbed her hand and began to lead her away before she looked up, saw it wasn’t her father, started crying and pulled her hand away…The prosecutor said, that when interviewed, Jaffari told police, ‘For us is not an issue.” Magistrate Saines said the prosecution case fell short of criminality and cited cultural differences as a possible mitigating factor.

(Thanks to reader norm.)
UPDATE
The judge in the case did not refer to cultural differences, other than those between the killer and his victim. But I am struck by the fact that the killer, who successfully argued a defence of provocation, still feels like the victim, and I wonder what makes him still feel entitled to do as he did.
From the NSW Supreme Court judgement last week against Yassir Ibrahim Hassan:

1On 17 April 2012, Yassir Ibrahim Hassan killed his wife, Mariam Henery Yousif, at their home in Wylie Park, New South Wales… He did so by stabbing her on a large number of occasions in a violent attack to her body.... 5On 6 December 2013, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter…21Mr Hassan was born on 1 January 1958, and was, accordingly, 54 at the time he killed his wife. Prior to his moving to Australia in 2008, Mr Hassan had spent his whole life in the Sudan.22His wife, Mariam Yousif, was born in May 1987 and was, accordingly, 24 years old at the time of her death. Although born in the Sudan, Ms Yousif grew up and was educated in Australia.23Mr Hassan and Ms Yousif were married in the Sudan in 2003. He was then 45 years old and she was 16…26In January 2010, the youngest child of Mr Hassan and Ms Yousif was born. ... It seems that from about that point of time the marital relationship deteriorated. The cause of that deterioration is not entirely clear. There were, however, a number of events which no doubt aggravated the relationship. In the first place, there was a significant age difference between the couple. Secondly, having been raised in Melbourne, Ms Yousif seemingly had a more relaxed approach to socialising with the broader community. Mr Hassan thought that she should not have such broad interaction. There were cultural differences in their relationship about the appropriate bounds of adult behaviour…29The marital relationship deteriorated to such an extent that in October 2011, Ms Yousif ... told her mother and sister that her husband, Mr Hassan, had, in accordance with Muslim law, divorced her… Ms Yousif lodged an application for public housing ... This separation lasted a number of weeks, and terminated when Mr Hassan telephoned and informed Ms Yousif that he had “rescinded” their divorce because he was not in a rational state of mind when he first divorced her....36During the course of this day [of her murder], Ms Yousif told both her sister, and later her mother, that she and Mr Hassan had argued…45Whilst I cannot be satisfied as to exactly what was said, the most likely account is that which was given by Mr Hassan in his evidence, when he said that his wife said to him words to the effect that he was not a man, the children were not his but were another man’s and he should take a look in the mirror, and further that these words were accompanied by swearing on her part… I accept that Ms Yousif said something like the words to which I have just referred to Mr Hassan which caused him to lose his self-control, take up a large knife, and brutally attack his wife. He stabbed her at least 14 times....55Mr Hassan falls to be sentenced for the manslaughter of his wife upon the basis of a low level verbal provocation which was shortly thereafter followed by an excessively violent and brutal attack…Save for his early plea of guilty, I see no evidence of remorse whatsoever in the attitude of Mr Hassan to what has occurred… The totality of the evidence reveals to me a man who feels unable to demonstrate any regret for what he did, and a man who feels wronged by his current predicament. He regards himself as the victim of what occurred and not a perpetrator. He continues to advance excuses for what occurred, largely about his wife’s conduct towards him which he continues to regard as inappropriate…95Mr Hassan, I sentence you to the following term of imprisonment: (1)A non-parole period of 9 years ...

Just nine years? Did cultural factors affect the killer’s view of the seriousness of his wife’s “provocation”? Did the jury have in mind his cultural background in accepting, to some extent, his excuse?
I do not assert this as so. I ask what hasn’t been answered.
(Via Tim Blair.)

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Books from slavers - ed

Timbuktu's Desert Scrolls: Re-writing the History of Africa

You may have witnessed a moment, an event or a discovery that would change the future of a community. This event or discovery would have to be something exceptional and dramatic to write a new chapter in the books of history.

But imagine witnessing a moment or discovery that would re-write the history of an entire nation! That has got to be something spectacular to erase and replace the pages of history.

===They were confident. They had faced the worst (they thought) and had proven their resilience and worth. Nobody anticipates insanity that is shared. I am told serial killers have bragged they get their victims compliant by giving them hope "put on these bonds and I will set you free." It would come out in the nuremberg trials, and those that followed, but has been shielded from the community by antiseptic bureaucracy, that insanity was shared. Inhuman abuse got worse. And a resilient, beautiful people were slaughtered in a way that it would become illegal to butcher meat.===

===“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” - Isaiah 53:5-6===

Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon

Morning

Pilate delivered our Lord to the lictors to be scourged. The Roman scourge was a most dreadful instrument of torture. It was made of the sinews of oxen, and sharp bones were inter-twisted every here and there among the sinews; so that every time the lash came down these pieces of bone inflicted fearful laceration, and tore off the flesh from the bone. The Saviour was, no doubt, bound to the column, and thus beaten. He had been beaten before; but this of the Roman lictors was probably the most severe of his flagellations. My soul, stand here and weep over his poor stricken body.

Believer in Jesus, can you gaze upon him without tears, as he stands before you the mirror of agonizing love? He is at once fair as the lily for innocence, and red as the rose with the crimson of his own blood. As we feel the sure and blessed healing which his stripes have wrought in us, does not our heart melt at once with love and grief? If ever we have loved our Lord Jesus, surely we must feel that affection glowing now within our bosoms.

"See how the patient Jesus stands,

Insulted in his lowest case!

Sinners have bound the Almighty's hands,

And spit in their Creator's face.

With thorns his temples gor'd and gash'd

Send streams of blood from every part;

His back's with knotted scourges lash'd.

But sharper scourges tear his heart."

We would fain go to our chambers and weep; but since our business calls us away, we will first pray our Beloved to print the image of his bleeding self upon the tablets of our hearts all the day, and at nightfall we will return to commune with him, and sorrow that our sin should have cost him so dear.

Evening

"And Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it for her upon the rock, from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven, and suffered neither the birds of the air to rest on them by day, nor the beasts of the field by night."2 Samuel 21:10

If the love of a woman to her slain sons could make her prolong her mournful vigil for so long a period, shall we weary of considering the sufferings of our blessed Lord? She drove away the birds of prey, and shall not we chase from our meditations those worldly and sinful thoughts which defile both our minds and the sacred themes upon which we are occupied? Away, ye birds of evil wing! Leave ye the sacrifice alone! She bore the heats of summer, the night dews and the rains, unsheltered and alone. Sleep was chased from her weeping eyes: her heart was too full for slumber. Behold how she loved her children! Shall Rizpah thus endure, and shall we start at the first little inconvenience or trial? Are we such cowards that we cannot bear to suffer with our Lord? She chased away even the wild beasts, with courage unusual in her sex, and will not we be ready to encounter every foe for Jesus' sake? These her children were slain by other hands than hers, and yet she wept and watched: what ought we to do who have by our sins crucified our Lord? Our obligations are boundless, our love should be fervent and our repentance thorough. To watch with Jesus should be our business, to protect his honour our occupation, to abide by his cross our solace. Those ghastly corpses might well have affrighted Rizpah, especially by night, but in our Lord, at whose cross-foot we are sitting, there is nothing revolting, but everything attractive. Never was living beauty so enchanting as a dying Saviour. Jesus, we will watch with thee yet awhile, and do thou graciously unveil thyself to us; then shall we not sit beneath sackcloth, but in a royal pavilion.

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Meshach

[MÄ“'shach] - agile or expeditious.

The name given to Mishael, one of Daniel's friends, by the chief of Nebuchadnezzar's eunuchs (Dan. 1:7; 2:49; 3). With his other two companions he defied the edict of the king and was miraculously delivered from the fiery furnace.

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Today's reading: Judges 11-12, Luke 6:1-26 (NIV)

1 Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior. His father was Gilead; his mother was a prostitute. 2 Gilead's wife also bore him sons, and when they were grown up, they drove Jephthah away. "You are not going to get any inheritance in our family," they said, "because you are the son of another woman." 3 So Jephthah fled from his brothers and settled in the land of Tob, where a gang of scoundrels gathered around him and followed him.

4 Some time later, when the Ammonites were fighting against Israel, 5 the elders of Gilead went to get Jephthah from the land of Tob. 6 "Come," they said, "be our commander, so we can fight the Ammonites."

7 Jephthah said to them, "Didn't you hate me and drive me from my father's house? Why do you come to me now, when you're in trouble?"

Jesus Is Lord of the Sabbath

1 One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. 2 Some of the Pharisees asked, "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?"

3 Jesus answered them, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? 4 He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions." 5 Then Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."

6 On another Sabbath he went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled.7 The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath....

Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness

1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.

3 The devil said to him, "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread."

4 Jesus answered, "It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone.'"

5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours."

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About Me

I'm author of History in a Year by the Conservative Voice aka History of the World in a Year by the Conservative Voice.

I'm the Conservative Voice.

I'm looking to make contact with those who might use my skill.

I have an m-audio mobile pre amp fed by the audiotechnica 2041sp condensor mic pack. Prior to 15/4/06, I'd used a Shure sm-58 that required a nuclear blast to register a sound or the internal mic of my aged imac, which has a penchance to recording my breathing. I also used a Griffin itrip, until the community convinced me it was not hiding my talent as well as the other mics.

I am a Writer and an occasional Math Teacher (Sir, what's the occasion?). I like to sing, having no instrumental talent (cannot even clap in time, and yes, I'm aware singing badly IS obnoxious).

I have performed the finale to Les Miserables before an audience of 500. I have also sung before a similar audience (students, parents) renditions of 'I Will' (Beatles), 'Mr Cairo' (Jon Vangelis) and 'I am Australian' (Seekers). Now I seek another profession because the audience hates me ..